Hunt’s work illustrates a passage from a popular Victorian novel, set in fourteenth-century Rome, by Bulwer Lytton, and is characterized by a careful description of the outdoor setting. Millais’ Isabella is based on John Keats’ retelling of a story from Boccaccio’s Decameron; the artist re-creates in sumptuous detail the tastes and textures of a medieval banquet, from the creased tablecloth strewn with nutshells to guests at the grandly arrayed gathering. In his portrayal of the life of the Virgin, Rossetti employs an archaizing style and symbolic elements associated with early Renaissance painting: the lily, representing purity, the dove of the Holy Spirit, and the cruciform trellis. Other founding members of the Brotherhood—James Collinson (1825–1881; he resigned after converting to Catholicism in 1850), William Michael Rossetti (1829–1919), Frederic George Stephens (1827–1907), and the sculptor Thomas Woolner (1825–1892)—exhibited less frequently than its three prolific leading members.